The (Not So) Epic Rivalry of Pied Piper and Vibe
by KitKatt0430
Summary: Cisco just wants to stop having forced visions of the Pied Piper planning Robin Hood style heists. Hartley just wants Vibe to stop showing up while he's doing criminal activities. The Flash and Captain Cold would like for the two of them to stop infringing on their flirting... er... very important and epic battles. Hartmon Fest 2019 - March 3rd - other Earths


Summary: Cisco just wants to stop having forced visions of the Pied Piper planning Robin Hood style heists. Hartley just wants Vibe to stop showing up while he's doing criminal activities.

The Flash and Captain Cold would like for the two of them to stop infringing on their flirting... er... very important and epic battles.

Hartmon Fest 2019 - March 3rd - other Earths

_**The (Not So) Epic Rivalry of Pied Piper and Vibe**_

Cisco first became aware of his meta powers around six, almost seven, months after STAR Labs' particle accelerator blew up in Dr. Wells' face.

Just as Cisco was drifting off to sleep, he thought he heard the sound of a flute. Then came the sound of an unfamiliar voice… in Cisco's apartment. Which, naturally, jolts Cisco awake.

The world is slightly tinted blue and what Cisco is seeing? Not his apartment.

"So, Ratagast, I think the flute's finally finished."

A cute guy with dark blond hair, tortoiseshell glasses, and a very, very adorable smile was sitting in the middle of a tiny, run down looking studio apartment. It was mostly empty, save for some fairly nice clothes hung up on a rickety looking closet replacement system, an inflatable queen bed, a table with a boxy looking TV on top with a PS3 hooked into it, and a ridiculous amount of circuitry spread across the floor next to a flute. Probably the flute Cisco had heard just moments earlier. Oh, and of course there was a brown rat in a cage gnawing on a salt lick and generally ignoring it's owner, cute-blond.

"Let's give it another try to be sure." The blond picked up the flute – which, in retrospect, was the weirdest looking flute Cisco had ever seen. Certainly the flutes he remembered from his high school band days (he'd played the trombone because Riker was cool) didn't have technology grafted onto them in such a way that it wouldn't look out of place on a Borg cube.

But cute-blond didn't seem to think there was anything weird about the flute as he brought it up to his lips and started to play. The flute began to pipe out a jaunty little tune, cute-blond's fingers gliding over the keys… and the rat began to dance.

Cisco watched, a little fascinated and a little horrified, as cute-blond made the rat dance all around the cage for a little while before stopping the music.

"I'm out of practice… gonna to have to work on my breathing skills," cute-blond muttered to himself. "Won't do at all to run out of breath mid-heist."

Heist?

"So, Ratagast, think I'm ready to hit up a few restaurants tomorrow?"

Hit up restaurants? What the hell?

The rat had gone over to its water bottle and was happily licking away water-droplets from the dropper. But cute-blond grinned at it like that was some sort of answer. "Right. I can do this." He paused and glanced over at the clock. "And it's after midnight." In fact, it was nearly one AM. Cute-blond yawned and stretched, then set the flute aside. He gathered up all the spare parts into a box, which then went under the table the TV was perched on. Flipping off the light on the way to bed, cute-blond bid his rat goodnight and then started undressing.

Even with the lights off, Cisco could still get a good view of cute-blond from the light streaming in through the windows from nearby street lamps and he attempted to look away, blushing, as cute-blond's shirt came off to reveal some very nice looking abs…

Cisco blinked up at his ceiling. The world wasn't blue; it was nearly pitch black because of his curtains. (There was a bright light right outside his window, but the blackout curtains were effective enough that with them closed there was no telling that street lamp even existed.)

He reached for his cell phone because 'heist' and 'hit up restaurants' sounded like a weird combination for theft, but definitely the sort of thing the police should be dealing with… and then put the phone back down because what, exactly, would Cisco say in his anonymous tip? 'Hi, I had a vision or, like, maybe a really vivid dream of a really hot white guy with blond hair, glasses and a couple of adorable moles planning to steal from restaurants while chatting with his pet rat and playing with a flute that can apparently be used for mind control… of rodents at the very least.'

Oh, yeah, that'd go over well.

Odds were, anyway, that it really was just a very vivid dream that his mind had conjured up because he'd been shot down by the cute blonde at the cafe earlier that day. Admittedly, that was a 'she' and the dream was of a 'he', but Cisco was flexible. Gender was pretty much irrelevant when it came to who made him blush and stammer like an idiot. (He'd mixed up his words trying to ask the pretty blonde chick at the cafe if she'd care to join him and maybe talk about their favorite sci-fi shows? She'd been wearing a Firefly t-shirt, after all, so it had seemed like they'd at least have one show in common. But she'd giggled, called him cute, and then proceeded to meet up with her very rugged looking boyfriend. Cisco had kind of slunk down in his seat when the boyfriend glowered at him and tried to will the ground to open up and swallow him whole. Obviously, that did not happen, but at least the boyfriend stopped glaring after a few seconds of intense eye-knives.)

Cisco sighed and rolled over, scowling at his alarm clock. 1:07 AM glowed innocuously at him, as though mocking him for how he had to be at work by 8:30 in order to have enough time to settle his stuff before the 8:45 scrum meeting and, since he hadn't taken a shower before going to bed, that meant waking up at 5:30 to shower, have breakfast, and still be able to make it to work on time.

Grumbling to himself, Cisco buried his face in his pillow and tried to think sleepy thoughts.

* * *

While Cisco doesn't hear about any restaurants being hit up for money, he does learn that there are restaurants where the leftover and discarded food is being stolen. Just so happened to coincide with anonymous donations of restaurant quality food to a local Freespace run soup kitchen.

He might've dismissed it as a coincidence, but Cisco had two more midnight visions of cute-blond chatting with his rat about the heists – and the subsequent donations – going well. Truth be told, Cisco didn't really care about the thefts. The food, which would have been thrown out anyway, was going to people who needed it and no one was getting hurt, so why anyone was upset about it Cisco couldn't even begin to fathom. No, what really bugged him about cute-blond was that he kept interrupting Cisco's sleep.

Cisco was already something of an insomniac. He didn't need cute-blond making his sleeplessness worse.

Also, Cisco was starting to suspect that his visions weren't just real, but evidence that he'd been affected by the particle accelerator explosion. Something about cute-blond's flute seemed to particularly resonate with whatever it was that triggered Cisco's visions and… Cisco was stuck with uncontrollable visions as a result.

At least, for now anyway, the visions weren't triggering while cute-blond was actually pulling off his heists. There was probably something about Cisco's mental defenses, or whatever, being lowered while he was asleep (or at least drifting off to sleep) that made him particularly susceptible to the visions. So long as Cisco didn't have one of these vivid visions while crossing the street, he figured it could be worse and resigned himself to having a front row seat to cute-blond's ongoing attempt to be a modern day Robin Hood.

* * *

Lucky for Cisco, visions were not his only power, as he found out a few weeks after he started having his sleep interrupted by cute-blond. (Or, as the press was calling him, the Pied Piper. Cisco couldn't seem to stop thinking of him as cute-blond, though.)

Cisco had put in a late night at work and was biking home in the dark when, a few streets down from his apartment complex during his usual shortcut through an alleyway, he was knocked off his bicycle by a lumbering guy with a ski-mask on who immediately demanded all Cisco's cash while Cisco lay sprawled out on the ground, dazed. Ski-mask-dude waved a gun at Cisco, so he put up his hands instinctively and felt… something.

Suddenly the gun was skidding harmlessly across the ground and ski-mask-dude was unconscious, having been knocked into a wall.

Then came the sound of someone jogging around the corner. "Everything okay?"

The guy was a cop, based on his badge, and probably a detective, considering his nice suit. "No. This guy just attacked me. But he got caught on my bike when it went down and I guess the momentum threw him into the wall?" Cisco improvised. "It's kind of a blur and… oh my god is that gun?" he stumbled to his feet – mentally bitched over the fact that his nice work jeans were torn and now he needed a new pair – and took a few steps away from the gun.

"I'm Detective Thawne."

"Cisco Ramon."

There was a quiet groan and then the thug that had attacked Cisco started to stir. Five minutes later, Thawne had the thug in custody and Cisco was promising to come down to the station the next day to give his statement.

Once he got home, Cisco cleaned up his scrapes from where the pavement had proven unforgiving to his hands and left knee, and took a shower. He figured he'd call in to work in the morning and use some of his PTO to take the morning off in order to deal with the whole police statement thing.

Then, maybe, if there was time he could try to figure out just what he'd done with his hands – thrown energy? Vibrations maybe? - that had tossed that giant of a man and his gun across the alleyway.

But around 1:30 AM, Cisco's world turned blue.

Cute-blond was playing the flute again, but there was something off. He kept missing notes and was blinking a whole lot and finally just stopped playing altogether… in favor of sniffling back tears. "Sorry Ratagast, I'm not really in the mood to play tonight after all. Should be sleeping right now, I guess, but I can't seem to do that, either."

He took the rat out of its cage and held it, stroking its fur. The tears seemed to win, running down cute-blond's face. "I called my parents today. It's been almost three years now and… every time I call I think, maybe they've changed their minds. Maybe it'll be different this time. But whoever answered the phone… they told him to tell me they have no son.

"The Rathaways have no son," cute-blond repeated. "Exact words." There was so much pain in that voice. Cisco wished he could reach out to hug the man… without, you know, freaking him out by having a strange guy appear out of nowhere to hug him? Probably for the best that Cisco couldn't do that.

Cute-blond sat there for a long while, petting the rat, and was still doing so when Cisco felt the scene begin to fade… and reality set back in.

The clock read 2:23 AM and Cisco decided, as he rolled over, to just take the whole day off of work instead.

* * *

It took Cisco pretty much all day, after dealing with the whole police statement thing, to figure out how the newest aspect of his powers worked. He could sort of, kind of, if he concentrated really, really hard, direct vibrational energy outward from his palms. Mostly it just fizzled out, but it was still really cool and, assuming he could learn to control his power, Cisco was already seeing his 'name' in the headlines. Super Hero Stops Neighborhood Menace. Or something like that.

Of course, Cisco would need a cool super hero name before that happened.

Meanwhile, it seemed Cisco wasn't the only person to get powers and think 'I could be a super hero.' A very speedy guy going by the name of Flash had popped up, stopping bank robberies and going toe to toe against Leonard Snart, who had earned the nickname Captain Cold after building himself a Cold Gun capable of freezing pretty much anything and everything. The Flash hadn't caught Captain Cold yet, but he'd saved a few cops from turning into popsicles, so pretty much everyone loved the speedster at this point.

But while the Flash dealt with big issues like Supervillians and bank robberies, the local drug dealers continued on business as usual. A young woman in his neighborhood had gone missing. And this was supposed to be the safe side of Central.

So Cisco put together a suit and started working on some gauntlets that would help him focus his powers. And some tech to help him focus his visions so he wouldn't get an unwanted blue screen in the middle of a fight. Once he got to the point of, you know, actually fighting

Unfortunately, he kept getting visions in the middle of the night of cute-blond. It was really screwing with his sleep cycles and he'd nearly fallen asleep during lunch at work the other day. Dr. McGee thought it was hilarious and she'd woken him up in time for his one-thirty meeting, but... something had to give.

Cisco had confirmed that he could not communicate with cute-blond during his visions. So that meant figuring out where cute-blond would be going next and meeting him there.

Easier said than done, unfortunately.

* * *

Hartley had, once upon a time, had a family that loved him.

Well... his parents had loved the idea of him. An heir to take over the business one day. But his sister had loved him for who he really was and Hartley had adored Jerrie in return. And though they'd only been able to communicate via email these past several years, the Rathaway siblings still adored each other. But, as far as Hartley's parents were concerned... they had no son.

It stung.

He'd been disowned shortly after graduating college with a BS in physics, but fortunately Hartley had a job lined up already. STAR Labs. It was a dream job working with Dr. Harrison Wells himself. Hartley had spend most of the first week pinching himself to be sure he wasn't dreaming the whole thing up. Especially when Dr. Wells himself introduced himself to Hartley and asked to play chess during his lunch break one day.

Hartley had loved working at STAR Labs. He'd loved working on the accelerator project. And he'd been two-thirds of the way to a Masters - taking mostly night classes - when... he'd found the flaw in the accelerator.

There'd been no question of not taking what he'd found to Dr. Wells. It was awful to be the bearer of bad news, but the accelerator was badly flawed and the likelihood of failure and, worse, explosion were ridiculously high. Never once had Hartley thought Dr. Wells would ignore the risks. No... Hartley had thought Dr. Wells would do the sane, rational thing. Postpone turning on the accelerator.

Hartley hadn't expected to be fired. To have his reputation smeared through the mud. To be standing outside the accelerator as it turned on and everything went to hell just like he'd predicted.

Dr. Wells was in a coma now and if he ever woke up it'd be to a body paralyzed from the waist down. Eleven people died that night. A lot more injured. There'd been talk, on and off, of possible charges of criminal negligence against Dr. Wells. Not that the charges would matter if Dr. Wells never woke up.

And if Dr. Wells never woke up, then how was Hartley supposed to get his life back? His reputation was still in ruins; no one would hire him. No respectable lab, anyway. Instead he was doing two part time jobs, considering a third, and moonlighting as the Pied Piper because he had to do something to get even the slightest resemblance of control back in his life.

Stealing from the rich to feed the poor while using a hypnosis inducing flute... bizarre, yes, but it made Hartley feel like he'd taken something back for himself.

He was never getting his Masters degree. He couldn't afford his last semester of classes and if he couldn't enroll as a student again within the next semester or two, he'd start losing the credits he'd already earned.

Hartley had spent a few days in an anxiety-induced fugue over that, his evenings full of uncontrollable sobbing, and taking care of Ratagast being the only thing that really got him through the day.

And then... it was stupid. He knew it was stupid. And reckless. And he was bound to get caught and arrested and then with an arrest record his life would really be screwed up, but... Hartley stole the things he needed to make his flute and gloves from STAR Labs. Not like there was anyone left there who'd need those parts or give a damn when they went missing. And from there he started stealing food from restaurants - perfectly good food they were going to throw out - and donating it to food kitchens. He was doing other things too. Breaking into the offices of corrupt corporate execs, finding the proof of their corruption, blackmailing them to funnel money to charities, and then tossing them to the FBI. He'd ferreted out a few corrupt cops and tossed the info on them to the FBI too. Various other minor crimes here and there, usually altruistic in some way. He'd made something of a name for himself as the Pied Piper and the press alternated between calling him a petty vandal and a modern day Robin Hood... when they bothered to notice his work at all.

Hartley wasn't a hero, though. No, he was a criminal at this point. He'd resigned himself to that fact.

... but at least his new arch foe was hot.

* * *

The new super hero on the block was a very handsome man who went by the moniker Vibe. Long hair, wraparound glasses, a very sexy outfit, and gauntlets that either produced vibrational blasts similar to Hartley's gloves or directed vibrational blasts produced by the man himself. Depended on whether or not Vibe was a meta or a very adventurous normal human.

Mostly Vibe went after really bad guys. A couple of drug dealers here, some gang members recruiting kids there... a few kidnappers too. Dude was making a pretty decent swath of Central City safe at night again. But... he'd also shown up at two of Hartley's last three heists, nearly botching Hartley's plans both times. He'd managed to get away with what he'd been after both times, but barely.

Hartley didn't know how he'd pinged this guy's radar but he'd like it if the dude found an actual super villain and not whatever the hell Hartley counted as to bother. It's not like Hartley was actually hurting anyone.

Though if Vibe happened to be single and looking for a hot guy to date, well... Hartley wouldn't say no, that was for sure.

Hopefully, though, Vibe was too busy tonight to interrupt.

Hartley hopped through the window into the home office of one Erick Jackson, whose company was doing things like selling substandard fuses. Those fuses had been linked to a number of electrical fires and burning down , but of course the company was denying all culpability and pointing fingers at the electricians who did the install. Hartley was pretty sure he could hack into the guy's computer pretty easily and find the proof necessary to screw this guy and his company over.

Settling at the computer, Hartley plugged in his USB and booted up the computer. He poked around the desk a little and... lo and behold, a sticky note with the latest password on it in the top right-hand drawer.

Thank god for terrible security practices. At this rate he wasn't going to have to actually hack anything. (Okay, so maybe he was a smidgen disappointed.)

Forty minutes later, Hartley was back out the window and headed home. The long way home, just in case. He shouldn't mock other people's shitty security and then be terrible with his own, after all.

Unfortunately, while cutting through the warehouse district, Vibe showed up.

Hartley sent a blast at him with his gloves, hoping to get the hell out of there while the other man was distracted. Unfortunately, Vibe was not distracted and shot back with his own vibrations. From there they were trading blasts and ducking out of the way and Vibe was possibly trying to call for a cease fire, but Hartley was having a hard time discerning what Vibe was saying over the sound of their attacks.

Of course, when the ice beam shot through the room, damaging one of the walls, they both stopped.

"Snart, you don't have to do this," came a rather impassioned plea from the scarlet speedster, who'd pretty much just appeared out of nowhere.

Captain Cold dramatically entered the room. "You're right, Red. I don't have to... but I want to."

Hartley shuffled awkwardly behind some boxes.

"I don't believe you. You're better than this. I know you are."

"Really. Because I helped you that one time and suddenly you're just so sure there's good in me." Cold's tone was sneering.

"You saved my life, Snart. You saved the city."

"Yeah, because I live in this city, Scarlet. I can't steal from a place that doesn't exist anymore, now can I?"

Hartley shouldn't have. He was actively trying not to.

He snickered.

"Who's there!" Snart demanded, whirling around to face the boxes Hartley was hiding behind.

Well... shit.

Hartley popped out of hiding. "In my defense, I was here first before you two interrupted with more melodrama I've seen since the last time I watched Galavant."

The Flash actually looked kind of embarrassed at that... which meant that the Flash got his reference. Awesome.

"So, how about I just leave you two to your flirting and get out of here?" Hartley took a step towards the door. That was when Captain Cold pointed his gun at Hartley, who did the sensible thing and stopped moving immediately.

"You're... the Pied Piper, aren't you?" The Flash took a step towards him and, wow, suddenly Hartley was feeling extremely unsafe from at least two directions. Three depending on whether Vibe was still there and hadn't skedaddled himself.

The answer, it turned out, was no. Vibe had not run off. Instead he seemed to think messing with Captain Freaking Cold was a good idea because one blast later, the cold gun was spinning across the floor away from Cold, the Flash, and Hartley. Vibe himself came over to Hartley and said, cheerfully, "right, so we'll just finish our conversation outside, you two continue your flirting... fighting. I meant fighting, it's just Piper said flirting, so..." Cold and Flash were staring at them both like they were the weirdos in this equation.

"We're not flirting," the Flash muttered petulantly, earning a sharply disgruntled look from Captain Cold.

"Bye," Hartley said, awkwardly elbowing Vibe to shut him up. They both headed for the door when...

"This is the police! We have this place surrounded."

"Well shit," Hartley and Vibe chorused.

"Oh, what do you have to worry about? I'm the one wanted for theft, vandalism, and extortion," Hartley hissed, turning to look at Vibe.

"Right, because vigilantism is such a legal hobby. Oh, wait, it isn't."

The police shouted again and in the background the Flash and Captain Cold were arguing passionately once more. Seriously, though, those two needed to just make out already.

"Dammit," Vibe groaned. "All I wanted was to ask you to change the frequency of your flute or help me design something so it'll stop triggering my visions every time you use it."

Uh... "What?"

"Your flute. When you play it for fun to make your pet rat Ratagast dance around - creepy, by the way, and definitely a violation of bodily autonomy or whatever - or use it to hypnotize people when you're doing whatever your latest illegal activity is..." they both flinched as Cold and the Flash went back outside through the wall Cold had damaged earlier (and had just made worse by turning the damage into a giant hole) and began fighting in earnest again. "Anyway, I get visions. And for whatever reason, your flute triggers those visions when I'm asleep. So I haven't been getting sleep because when I should be snoozing, instead I'm stuck watching you."

"So... you didn't randomly decide to make me your arch nemesis." That was... more disappointing than it ought to have been.

"No. No, not at all. That's... if you'd been paying attention the first time I showed up instead of just attacking straight off, you'd know this already."

"I'm hard of hearing; my hearing aids right now are kind of shit."

"Oh. Sorry." They stared at each other. Then it occurred to them both they probably should have been figuring out an escape plan because it looked like the Coldflash show was wrapping up and the police would be checking for stragglers any minute.

In fact, one particularly daring detective appeared to have already come inside. Hartley didn't hear anything, but Vibe clearly did because he pivoted sharply... but didn't stick the finish because he stumbled backwards, arms waving wildly, and fell back on Hartley. They plummeted to the ground and then... through the ground? Through something bright and sparkly, actually. Very pretty, Hartley liked it. He'd never look at the CGI for the anomalies on Primeval quite the same way again.

Then they were really smacking into the floor. Carpeted non-warehouse floor. A nice apartment floor, like the kind Hartley used to have before getting fired and his bank account ended up getting drained by medical bills for his damaged hearing.

"Nice save." Hartley paused a beat, adding, "I assume that was you, anyway." He sat up and looked over at the hero on the ground beside him... who was clutching his head in pain. "Oh, fuck, you didn't get shot, did you? I would have thought I'd hear a gunshot, but..."

"Not shot," Vibe gritted out. "My head hurts..." his voice broke a little on the 'ts' sound. "Oh, fuck, I didn't know my powers worked like that."

That was worrying. Also... "where are we?"

"My apartment. Turn off the lights." Vibe curled in on himself more, moaning in pain.

Right. Okay. Hartley could work with this. He got up, looked around for a light-switch, and did as asked, shutting off as many lights as he could. And then freezing in the darkness because... unfamiliar surroundings. He was so stubbing a toe on the couch if he moved.

Vibe groaned in pain again, motivating Hartley to move anyway. No stubbed toes, though. And his sight seemed to be adjusting, which was a plus.

"What's wrong with you?" Hartley finally asked, kneeling by the other man again.

"Migraine," Vibe ground out. "Get them sometimes when I overdo it."

And panicked usage of a previously unknown aspect of his powers would definitely count as overdoing it.

"Just need aspirin and sleep."

Vibe tried to get up, but collapsed halfway. So Hartley offered him help and was pleasantly surprised when Vibe accepted. They shuffled awkwardly into Vibe's bedroom and Hartley helped him out of his boots, pants, jacket, and face-obscuring glasses. And he tried not to notice how pretty Vibe was. So pretty.

Hartley departed for the bathroom in search of aspirin and upon success brought both that and a glass of water for Vibe's use. Then he headed back out into the living room and turned a few lights back on.

After a short mental debate, Hartley decided that it would not be a good idea to leave Vibe alone like this and resolved to check on him a few times during the night to make sure the guy didn't actually need to go to the hospital. Thus resolved to do the right thing, Hartley turned to snooping like any self-respecting anti-villain in a hero's home ought to.

Shortly after that, Hartley discovered Vibe's journal of notes on 'cute-blond' who may or may not be 'Hartley Rathaway'.

Cute-blond, huh? Hartley could totally work with that.

* * *

Cisco woke up and took stock of things. His head still hurt, but it no longer felt like light and sound were stabbing him repeatedly in the brain. Fucking migraines. Like hangovers without the fun part to precede them.

And then he remembered what led to that migraine. And who he'd let into his apartment.

By accident, but still. The point stood.

Hartley Rathaway, aka cute-blond, had been in his apartment.

The door creaked open.

Correction. Hartley Rathaway was still in his apartment.

"You haven't keeled over and died yet, have you?"

Right. Hartley had been poking his head in to make sure he was alright every half-hour to forty-five minutes for the last... what time was it, anyway.

Considering the bright daylight peeking out from the sides of the blackout curtains, a lot later than Cisco would've liked.

At least it was a Saturday.

"I don't think so," Cisco croaked. He winced; he sounded awful.

"Think your stomach can handle coffee?"

Cisco considered that idea and then said, "yes. Probably."

"Be right back." A few moments later, a mug full of coffee was deposited on Cisco's nightstand.

Cisco sat up very carefully and drank the coffee which was, thankfully, fresh but not too hot. Some more of his headache receded as the liquid warmth hit his system.

"Thanks."

"So. What do I call you? Vibe seems wrong if you're not in the sexy pleathers."

"It's not pleather, or leather," Cisco objected weakly, blushing.

"Whatever. It looks amazing on your ass. I suppose I could call you sexy-brunet. You know, to follow your theme of cute-blond."

Cisco blushed harder. "I-that is, my... my name is Cisco. Call me Cisco."

"Cisco the sexy-brunet?"

"Cisco Ramon." Cisco thought he might combust from the heat of his blush at this point.

Hartley looked very pleased with himself. Self-satisfied smugness was actually a good look for the guy, not that Cisco was ever telling him that.

"So... my flute triggers your visions, huh?"

"Yeah."

"That sucks. Let's figure out how to make that stop."

Cisco grinned.

* * *

"So, Hartley, when you applied for a job at Mercury Labs after Wells wrongfully fired you, who'd you talk to?" Cisco asked.

They were most of the way through building the specialized white-noise generator that should, theoretically, prevent Hartley's flute or any other devices emitting similar frequencies, from triggering Cisco's visions at night. They'd made quick progress in narrowing down what it was the flute was emitting that caused the problem, but that particular frequency was unfortunately necessary for making the flute's hypnotic qualities work. Cisco wasn't about to demand Hartley stop using the flute since as far as he was concerned, Hartley was also a vigilante.

It took them a little longer to find a counter for the frequency, but it seemed to do the trick when Hartley simulated the frequency with his gloves on their lowest settings - settings which barely rustled paper and Hartley had to deactivate some of his limiters to reach - so it seemed likely their little white noise generator would do the trick.

Of course... that meant they were about to run out of excuses to hang out and flirt. Cisco didn't like that idea at all.

"Uh... honestly, I don't remember. Nasally, pinched voice, though."

"Ugh, Fitzpatrick." Cisco wrinkled his nose distastefully. Fitzpatrick was not Cisco's favorite person; dude was the sort of guy who liked to cloak his racism and queerphobia in political correctness.

"Why does it matter?"

"So I can tell Dr. McGee who's responsible for you not working at Mercury Labs." Cisco grinned when Hartley stared at him blankly. "You're a genius, Hartley. Dr. Wells used to brag on you to Dr. McGee because you picked the STAR Labs over Mercury almost, what, four years ago?"

"Three and a half is more like," Hartley muttered. "I... Dr. McGee knows who I am?"

"Yeah, she does. If you'd still be interested in working at Mercury Labs, I can put you in touch with her."

"She knows who I am," Hartley repeated, stunned.

"Hartley. Job? Yes or no."

"Hell yes." Hartley paused and then added, "one of the perks of this job would be getting to flirt with you every day, right?"

"I, uh, yes? I mean, if you want to... and you wouldn't have asked if you didn't want to..." Cisco froze when Hartley brushed a light kiss against his cheek.

"So, I was pretty close to done on my masters and if I re-enroll for the next semester I shouldn't lose any of my credits. Think Dr. McGee would be willing to have Mercury Labs spring for helping me cover tuition costs?"

"I can't guarantee it, but I bet she would." Cisco grinned as Hartley let out a little squee of joy and twirled in his chair.

"Flirting with you, awesome lab job, and finishing my continuing education? Sign me up already!"

* * *

Hartley's first day at Mercury Labs was about two and a half weeks later. Cisco had gotten Hartley a personal interview with Dr. McGee the very next day at lunch, which Hartley had to take time off one of his part time jobs to be able to attend. But it was worth getting cussed out by his manager, because Dr. McGee was amazing.

She was waving the usual time requirements on funding additional degrees since Hartley was so close to done, his college transcript was flawless, and also she was completely incensed on his behalf over the way Dr. Wells had treated him.

Which meant that Hartley got to see Cisco every day at work. Which was lovely. They weren't on the same projects, but they had lunch together nearly every day that first week. And Cisco insisted on taking Hartley for a celebratory dinner that Friday.

Dinner at a nice restaurant. Relatively nice, anyway. Nicer than anywhere Hartley had been for a while, anyway, and significantly more expensive that the cheap takeaway places he'd been frequenting. Well, nice enough that Hartley had dressed up in his best clothes and still been convinced that everyone could tell that what he was wearing came from thrift stores and cheap knock off brands. But not that they were super judging about it the way people would at the sort of restaurants he used to frequent with his parents.

At least Hartley was aware that he was being paranoid and directing internalized class-ism at himself. Moving past the rich-brat snobbery was getting marginally easier these days.

On the way back to their cars, however, Cisco reached out and took Hartley's hand, tugging him to a stop.

"So, um, we've been flirting for a while now and... if you'd be cool with it, I'd like for us to go on dates. To be dating... For us to be dating."

"Would that make tonight our first date?" Hartley asked, leaning in a bit teasingly.

"Yes? I mean, if that's... if you want us to be dating. Tonight could totally be..." Hartley cut Cisco off with a kiss on the mouth, winding a hand around Cisco's hips towards the small of his back to draw the other man closer.

"That'd be a 'yes'," Hartley murmured against Cisco's lips when he drew back, ever so slightly, from their kiss.

Cisco just pulled him back against him for more kissing.


End file.
